Welcome Back to The Synergetic Health Newsletter! 

Thursday, April 3rd, 2025. Greetings from Phu Quoc, Vietnam! I am still posted up at the Bambusa Resort on Vietnam’s most popular island. For $23/night I got a good sized hotel room overlooking a beautiful pool surrounded by trees and a free breakfast buffet— where they know I’d like my four scrambled eggs to be cooked without vegetable oil 🙂 In today’s letter I will continue to explore my recent experience adding context from another health professional.

In my informal conversations with people discussing my favorite topics of health and awakening I almost always talk about the invisible obstacles that are preventing us from obtaining optimal health and clear seeing. I’ve managed to move past many of these obstacles (which I also describe as “trapped emotions”) in the past several years— after deeply studying and practicing mind-body techniques— but never had quite the experience I’m going through now, which I will further elucidate in today’s post.

🥹 Emotional Alchemy

A Primer on Energy Medicine and Emotional Healing

I recently listened to a podcast with Dr. Jess Bell, an energetic osteopath whose story mirrors mine in a lot of ways. Her deep experience with the body and the human biofield provides the perfect context to discuss the reorganization process I'm currently going through.

Jess, like me, always looked "out there" for physical healing. Despite her medical training as an osteopathic doctor, she struggled with her own persistent pain. As she shares: "I've had amazing healers working within my body and what an incredible gift that none of that, none of it, actually offered the disillusion of that pain that I've been walking with since I was four years old."

This resonated with me. Here was someone who had access to the best healing modalities, who was herself a skilled practitioner, yet still couldn't resolve her own physical issues through external treatments alone.

She eventually discovered what many of us learn the hard way - that true healing often requires an internal journey. In her practice, she noticed a pattern with her patients too. She could help them feel better temporarily during sessions, but once they left, they would return with the same issues, just temporarily relieved.

This realization led her to develop a deeper understanding of how healing actually works in the human system. She describes two types of healing transmission - horizontal (from outside sources like books, practitioners, or videos) and vertical (connecting with our own internal healing system).

The Biofield and Emotional Storage

What Jess articulates so well is how our bodies store emotional energy:

"Our divinity lies in the ability for us to actually digest and process these emotions because these emotions hold gold within them, the emotional energy that the emotions are made out of is the most potent fuel for our bodies."

This stored emotional energy becomes what Jess describes as "boulders" in our energy system:

"In the biofield, there are a lot of imprints/grooves, undigested biophotonic standing waves (light energy) that most often are from undigested emotions."

These energetic blocks don't have to come from major trauma or obviously difficult experiences. They can form from seemingly small moments, especially when we're young and our nervous systems are still developing.

If the biofield is new to you, I’ve written about it before. Or read anything written or said by Eileen McKusick.

How Small Moments Create Lasting Blocks

One personal example I can share: when I was young, my family went on a weekend ski trip that happened to fall on my birthday (which was on a Sunday). I didn't enjoy skiing and would have much rather spent my birthday with my friends. The whole car ride home on my birthday, I felt deeply sad and frustrated, but I didn't voice these feelings because I sensed (knew) my parents wouldn't validate them.

I was prepared to go to my room and process my disappointment alone, but when we got home, I was greeted with a surprise birthday party with all my friends. In that moment, my young nervous system had to rapidly bury the sadness/hurt and switch into "happy soldier" mode - an overwhelming experience that required suppressing one emotional state and forcing another.

Who knows if this specific experience created an energetic boulder? But it illustrates the type of moment that can create stuck energy that might stay lodged in the system for years or decades, often surfacing later as pain or disease - until it can properly complete its course through release.

As Bell explains: "We come into our physical bodies. We are in these systems where every single event we navigate through our lives and experience offers an energetic broadcast that comes into the body. It has an emotional response associated with it.

If something comes in and emotionally we can synchronize with love and connect to the experience, we're able to alchemize the energy that comes into the body, and it will flow right through. But if we have an event that happens—especially early in our lives—that's very big, very threatening to our system, part of that energetic broadcast comes in and flows through, while part of it doesn't."

The Consequences of Emotional Storage

When we store these emotions rather than processing them, they drain our energy:

"We store them. They go into cellular storage and biophotonic storage within the biofield. That over time, creates a lot of weakness because it is stored voltage, that is stored biophotonic light, so then the voltage that is running through the currents of the body are diminished because there is so much in storage which we are feeding."

This weakness manifests in various ways - for me, it was persistent physical asymmetries and imbalances that no amount of external treatment could fully resolve.

The Breakthrough

My breakthrough really just came a couple weeks ago after years of learning, six biofield tuning sessions with Carla Adams, deep diaphragmatic breathing, a long day hiking in nature, a few hits of a joint, and a trigger that opened the floodgates.

As Bell describes, the release process is powerful: "The most powerful way for us to transmute and clear these emotions is through tears, is through emoting, is through the vibration of crying."

Listen to how Bell describes the purpose of these stored emotions:

"These emotions are hanging out because they have really vital voltage for us and they want to come back through the body in order to revitalize the body and elevate and amplify the voltage and the health and the healing capacity of the body."

This stored emotional energy is actually potential fuel waiting to be released and utilized by the body. How incredible is that?

The Physical Manifestation of Emotional Blocks

The progression from energetic blockage to physical pain is something Bell describes well:

"Pain always manifests at the energetic level, without exception. We are born with a central energetic channel that connects us to the energies of source and the earth. It's always at the energetic level that the congestion begins. As time goes on, whatever it is that is sitting within the system energetically that is not flowing and hooked up to the body as a whole will begin to activate and sensate."

This explains why so many of us experience chronic pain or recurring physical issues despite trying countless physical interventions. We're addressing the symptoms, not the source.

Getting to the Root

What makes Bell's approach different is her understanding that intellectual awareness isn't enough:

"It's never the thinking of the feeling that is going to support the clearing of the problem. Because it's energetic and it goes through the body. Allow the emotions to vibrate back through the cells of the body, because that is what actually clears them."

This explains why all my research about emotional roots of illness, while helpful, didn't create the breakthrough I needed. I had to actually feel and process the emotion(s) - not just understand them conceptually.

Beyond External Solutions

Bell articulates the limitations of external healing using her river and boulder metaphor:

"Whatever we reach for outside of ourselves is not going to allow us the same healing— it can soothe the boulder, debulk the boulder, take away layers from the boulder, but the core of the boulder will remain."

This doesn't mean external support isn't valuable - it absolutely is. Various modalities can create the conditions for release, but the actual healing occurs when we finally allow ourselves to feel what's been stored.

My Ongoing Process

I'm still in the midst of my reorganization process. Each day brings new sensations, and my left arm currently feels like a bionic limb, in a good way. There are muscles and joint movements I have no memory of ever using now being available to me, which is legitimately wild. I believe my left leg will soon follow in a similar fashion.

As Bell says, "Unprocessed energy holds vital information for your evolution. When we heal these boulders we become whole again, emotional and physically. Our physical symptoms dissolve, our emotional symptoms dissolve, and what we're left with is a body that feels open, expanded, capable, and energized."

A New Relationship with Pain

Another of Bell's insights is reframing how we view pain:

"Most of us view pain as punishment or a huge inconvenience. We create stories around pain and often don't differentiate between pain and suffering. We tend to view pain as a super negative thing. What we're inviting you into this morning as we dive into this subject is to view pain as an invitation—just like any other emotional upset or challenge we experience in life. All of it is an invitation."

This perspective shift allows us to approach our physical challenges and pain not as enemies to be fought but as messengers guiding us towards where to look. Energetic healing approaches have been around for millennia and it’s only until recently that most of us outsource 100% of our pain and disease management to external sources that completely discount these approaches in an arrogantly superior way— how is that working out for us?

The Invitation

If you're experiencing persistent physical issues despite trying various external treatments, consider Bell's perspective (which I share 100%) that your body might be trying to guide you toward stored emotional energy that needs processing.

This doesn't mean you need a dramatic cathartic release like mine to heal. The process looks different for everyone. But it does involve willingness to feel what's been stored - to go into the center of the boulder rather than trying to chip away at it from the outside.

As Bell says, "If Earth is a school—and we firmly believe that it is—then every single thing that happens to us is here to help us grow stronger, expand our view, and become the bigger, more boundless people we're here to be. Pain is part of that; it's not an exception to it."

I'm learning to view my ongoing reorganization process through this lens-- as my body's intelligence finally having the opportunity to release old patterns and establish new, more integrated ways of functioning.

The synchronicities and learnings continue to unfold on this subject as I was led to Jess’s interview, an informative book on subtle energies, recent advances in technologies that map the human biofield, conversations with the pioneer of Biofield Tuning Eileen McKusick, a great book “Be Your Own Healer” which aligns exactly with Jess’s message, nervous system educator Irene Lyon’s appearance on The Way Forward podcast, where she talks about the danger of held toxic emotions, and spiritual teacher Scott Kiloby’s new book “Awake But Sick”, which is 100% about how deep suppressed emotions prevent authentic spiritual growth.

Mom & Me

When I talk to my mom about this, she finds it puzzling. "You had a great childhood, what is it that you're looking for?" she asks. And I get it—on the surface, everything seemed fine.

But emotional suppression can be subtle. It’s not always big and obvious traumatic moments that get stuck (even though my aunt seems convinced I was touched by a priest as a kid after reading my last newsletter 😂).

Sometimes, it’s just one quick dismissal of a child’s emotional experience, which leads them to hide that expression for the rest of their lives—until it finally bursts to the surface as a physical issue.

Our parents did the best they could with what they knew, shaped by how their parents allowed or suppressed emotional expression, just like we are.

I could go on and on with this subject, and if it’s resonating with you, I encourage you to reach out. I’d love to dive deeper into how we can all learn to tap into the body’s innate intelligence and move through life with greater ease.

𝕏 Thread of the Week

😫 No, Everything Doesn’t Have to Suck: We’re constantly told that success requires grinding, pushing harder, and suffering through the process. But is that really the only way? This excellent article by Paul Millerd challenges the idea that work has to be a struggle, showing that you can enjoy what you do, make meaningful progress, and still succeed—without burning yourself out.

🤖 AI-Therapy Chatbot Compares to Gold-Standard Cognitive Therapy: Dartmouth researchers conducted the first clinical trial of "Therabot," a generative AI-powered therapy chatbot, finding significant symptom reductions in participants with depression (51%), anxiety (31%), and eating disorders (19%). Users reported trust and engagement comparable to in-person therapy, often initiating conversations and forming bonds with the chatbot.

♻️ Human Microplastic Removal Best Practices: This article examines the alarming buildup of microplastics and nanoplastics in human tissues, particularly in the brain, where concentrations are 3-5 times higher in dementia patients. Research shows these particles can cause inflammation, oxidative stress, and potential neurotoxicity. While complete avoidance is impossible, some practical reduction strategies are: switching from bottled to tap water, avoiding heating food in plastic, using glass containers, limiting processed foods, and installing HEPA filters. The body appears capable of clearing microplastics through sweat, urine, and feces, offering hope that reduced intake combined with enhanced elimination might decrease accumulation over time.

🔗 One Hitters

💬 “The only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life.” -Naval

🤯 Chronic stress is the silent killer behind heart disease, diabetes, and even aging. (Thread on Robert Sapolsky)

🦵 Knee pain? Stop Stretching! Do these exercises instead (Video)

💬 “Life really does begin at 40. Up until then, you’re just doing research.” -Carl Jung

✔️ That will do it for this time! Hopefully you got some value out of it. If you have any questions/comments/things you’d like to learn more about please don’t hesitate to reach out.

🔗 If you know anyone who loves learning about these types of topics, send them this link!

📰 To read all past newsletters, go here.